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Hi all,
Firstly, the AAIU are not part of the IAA. They operate under the Dept of Transport. They are very, very independent and very neutral. With regard to the lack of a suitable "authorisor", for PC-9 operations, the AC left themselves open and that opening should not have existed. The entire organisation had a shakedown after the 248 crash yet gaps and failures were allowed to creep in or continue to exist, because you have a strict hierarchy that rarely listens to any inmate who is not an Officer. A lot of policy and doctrine was created on the fly and the organisation has routinely taken bits and pieces from lots of sources and cobbled them together to make it's own manuals, which is half-arsed at the best of times. This wasn't only for pilot training, either. It was normal for technician training and for other specialities, to be substandard and below industry par. Post qualification training for aircraft techs was very haphazard, often ad-hoc and conducted on the fly and not documented or based on manuals or even carried out on an annual basis.

Regarding the AAIU being neutral ,I think when incidents involving AC are involved , having a former AC officer on the lead of an investigation is somewhat open to suggestion.

I'm not for one minute suggesting that Jurgen Whyte is not impartial, but I wouldn't want Jimmy Saville as my kids doctor!

One of the big critiscism here is that with military aviation people almost expect accidents, look at the pages of Air Forces monthly and the world is full of them, You tube same thing , 90% of the population other than those directly affected are immune to them, but lets put them in perspective.

Because loss of life is usually limited to those on board, its treated no waorse than a road accident, lets say for example if an Aer Lingus aircraft is lost and all 350 people on board are killed and the AAIU dig into operations procedure and come up with the type of management failures that have been endemic of military aviation in this country in the past number of years, heads would role.

Back to my point, its seems to be almost acceptable to have losses in military aviation,because of the perception of military aviators as portrayed in the media.

The public doesn't understand the potential consequences of a PC 9 hitting a school...

If there is an eventuality that may occur , then there should be a check put in place to know that all pilots operating the aircraft can deal with it. It is unacceptable to find that 'X' has never been taught as it never happened before.
Gttc highlights it from an engineering side based on personal experience, he also offers an opinion on management structures, I tend to agree.

There are still organisations within the entire DF that are run on a nod and a wink basis. While it may go un noticed in most day today operations ,aircraft are fa less forgiving and can't be operated on a nod and wink basis.

There are some who are blameless and do their job to the best of their ability , but if a structure allows people to progress with all the training they need to operate in their roles without the potential for the type of incident that are becoming far to frequent something is inherintly awry.

Given 75% of the role involving PC 9s specifically is training, how hard can it be to get it right.,

Laziness amounting to criminal negligence comes to mind. It would appear even after the 248 crash despite the 'shake up' nothing has changed, and it has cost at least three more lives to date.

If you read the report again you will find that Mr Whyte is indeed critical of the structures and asks all the questions that needed to be asked. The problem the Jevins family are having is the internal Air Corps "inquiry".

I would be loath to let even an implied suggestion of impartiality to stand without reply. I have huge respect for the AAIU and the job they do. It's often not an easy one.

Rather then viewing Mr Whyte as being selected to lead this investigation despite his Air Corps background, I would venture he was selected because of it.

The Man on street when looking at an Inquiry involving a former AC officer would have a tainted point of view that the port may not be all that it could.

Its easy be critical of the structures , why not recommend that the force be discontinued from flying until the results of the investigation are evaluated and possibly elevated to recommendation status and even enforce,the recommendations

An external audit needs to be applied by a third party with no affiliation to the air corps and have its findings publish and more importantly acted on.

the AAIU are not up to the job the have despite there being fatal incidents all around similar circumstances have fail to ground the air corps until an acceptable standard of safety and consistencey in basic training and management have been acheived.

The families of 248 were given guarantees that reviews would take place and related incidents due to oversights would not reoccur.

It hasn't changed.

I would venture he was selected because of it.

If he is to assume the role of Whistle blower, why only after another accident, there should have been regular reviews of AC procedures when the AAIU found there to be deficiences going back to 1999,

the AC needs to be brought under external auditory control until it is proven they can provide their own flight training and management of training operations and what ever else falls out of the closet without incurring losses because of non adherance to principles to deal with the type of incident that has currently cost at least seven men their lives.

the recent incident where a Pilot on Air Ambulance duty who wrecked his machine again is something yet to be published, what can of worms will it unearth?

Murph this is obviously a subject that evokes anger in you but I think you might misunderstand the role of the AAIU. They have no powers of grounding.

The AAIU are completely, totally and utterly separate from the IAA, the regulator. Even the IAA's grounding powers do not extend to the military.

The only individual with the power to issue a total grounding order for the AC would be the Minister. A failure in the internal oversight of the Air Corps is by default a Departmental failure in the oversight of the military.

The AAIU report into this crash was one of the most comprehensive they have ever produced. It went much deeper than the crash itself. It pulled not one single punch.

It is a factual document that those people on here who have long talked about the internal failings in the IAC can point to and say "I told you so".

It's obviously an emotive issue for you but we need to get a grip on expecting the AAIU to step outside its mission statement. It has advanced this as far as it can, the onus is on other organisations to act accordingly.ie this needs to be advanced by the Dept.

Any suggestion of impartiality is completely disproven by the content of the report. You do not need to read between the lines to see the damning evidence it lists.

Yeh, an American company with an American outlook on safety. You know, the ones with the worlds worst EMS safety record and consider SE aircraft suitable of operations over hostile environments. Talk about a square peg for a round hole!!

I don't believe there is any value in discussing the independence or otherwise of the AAIU (I believe they are), the reports into the recent crashes have been comprehensive and have been critical, in as far as they can be, of the organization.

The issue is that, unlike in the commercial/regulated world, the reaction of the organization and its drive to change can only come from within and without anyone being held accountable the change will be fairly minor and short lived.

A single safety audit completed in 2001 does not really scratch the surface!!

As with all AAIU reports, it's the unwritten stuff that contains the nuggets. Not interviewing the GoC is a major error. If a civilian trainer crashed, the owner of the school would be interviewed as a matter of course. Unfortunately, the man who "sent" the two men on their way was the man who died, so he can't be quizzed about his actions. In effect, we are left with the aircraft's electronic record and a radar track and a comms record to sort out fact from fiction. With regard to the Don's corporate mentality, for want of another word, it has always touted it's pilots as being the best and it has never liked them to be found wanting. The thing is, the Don has improved vastly in many ways since 248 but I suspect that there will always be gaps in the training and certain mentalities, that are in effect, not tolerated in civvie street. This doesn't mean that civvie operators are saints, either, but at least they seem to react quicker and are under tighter scrutiny.

Equally the Minister,who has overall corporate responsiblity,would not be interviewed unlees he/she had directly got involved in the op concerned.
Perhaps a better rule of thumb regarding who should be interviewed would be to grill those that invariably wheel themselves out for the limeoight whenever the org concerned is under a positive spotlamp.
The real diff between the civvy ops and others is not so much self/external regulation but the fact that the civvy op will fold if it suffers from adverse oversight with loss of jobs to all concerned.

The IAA is the auditing body for the ICAO in Ireland but "State" aircraft are exempt.

And there in lies the very problem.
However, JAR / EASA also state that State aircraft should be operated as closely to JARs / EASA regulations as possible and it is the State's obligation to ensure this is done. Now as a State body why cant the State decide to dedicate a unit of the IAA to oversight and control of military standards and operations. After all since the boom ended the IAA have spare capacity.

...and what would happen is that it would be filled with exers who would not do a tap, especially against their old school. Another point too is that the entire DF was exempt from a lot of the normal industrial 'elf 'n' safety protocols that were the norm in the civvie world. The DF could, and did, exclude H & S people if they wanted to. Certainly, in the Don, the hangars and workshops, in the 80s and 90s, were dreadfully below par and didn't beging to enter modern standards until the building of the new hangar and the flattening of old workshops. So, if the stuff on the groudn was in rag order, what hope was there for anything else?

...and what would happen is that it would be filled with exers who would not do a tap, especially against their old school.

And in the event of an accident where the inspector didn't enforce standards he also becomes personally responsible. If there's one thing that cuts the 'old school' s**t, its having your ass on the line.

Well, an AAIU man is less inclined to sweat over his career than someone involved in the background to an accident and as they will freely tell you, people lie to them the whole time. Also, inadequacies in a system, such as the Don, are not always easy to spot if you have never been exposed to any other environment. The DF are like everyone else, they don't like having their dirty laundry aired in public. They certainly don't like their inadequacies being shown back to them, especially when they trumpet their achievements the whole time.